


Learning How to Appreciate New Patterns

by zarabithia



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Curtain Fic, Domesticity, M/M, Steve is Not a Republican, Steve is Not a Virgin, Thanksgiving
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-29
Updated: 2013-11-29
Packaged: 2018-01-02 22:38:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,145
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1062486
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zarabithia/pseuds/zarabithia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steve has every intention of baking a pie to take to Thanksgiving dinner. It's not his fault that a bad case of nostalgia and sexual frustration interrupts his efforts and causes him to end up making eight batches of fudge instead.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Learning How to Appreciate New Patterns

**Author's Note:**

> So this was supposed to be a silly Omegle RP prompt, but somehow this fic happened.

"I'm just calling to see what you're bringing to the Turkey Day celebration," Sam says when he calls. 

Steve is in the middle of watching the most inaccurate description of the War that he's ever _heard_ on a channel that has the _audacity_ to put _history_ in its name, when he answers the phone. 

"The Red Skull was not secretly in cahoots with Stalin," Steve answers grouchily. "Schmidt barely cared about what _Hitler_ thought, and he was technically working _for_ Hitler." 

"Okay, we have had this discussion before. No good will come of you watching the History Channel. You should probably give up history books, too." 

"This is why our country isn't even in the top ten, academically," Steve complains. "People with _doctorate_ degrees sit around debating the social importance of the one time I had tea with Churchill and manage to gloss over the entirety of my childhood in order to be indignant about my supposed Republican ways." 

He can hear Sam rolling his eyes across the phone line, but unlike with _other people_ there's sympathy behind the impatience. "Nobody wants a Captain America who needed to become a soldier because he knew had a shitty childhood. It's not enough to have had a glorious mom. You had to have had a perfect dad, too. It's not enough to be Steve Rogers, man. You need to be Clark Kent too. Perfect little nuclear family unit with perfect parents. Clark Kent could be a Republican."

Steve thinks that Superman is supposed to be the story of immigrants, and he thinks about how much his mother might have liked him, if she'd lived long enough to read those comics. He thinks there's no way under hell that a couple of Jewish kids in the middle of the worst economy in the country's history would have made their immigrant metaphor in favor of _Hoover_. 

The History Channel probably thinks otherwise, though. 

Steve scowls at the pictures of the Howling Commandos that comes across the screen, and mutes the tv before he can hear what utter nonsense they are going to spout about his team _this time_. It's petty, but he feels like he would be less petty if people weren't so foolish. "Before he died, my father was an abusive jerk, and our neighbor once told my mother that the only thing that Joe Rogers ever did right was die." 

"That's harsh," Sam says. "Pretty sure nobody ever says that about Jonathan Kent. They quoted your neighbor, by the way, in one of the books about your life. The historian lost his tenure and is now working at a shitty community college in the Midwest. Indiana, I think?"

"Ohio," Steve says grumpily. "Indiana's the place where the lady who wrote the book on Mister Bradley is." 

"Yeah. Can we talk about Turkey Day yet, or do you need to vent more?" There's a flap of wings in the background, and Steve is pretty sure that's Sam's _bird_ , which is weird, considering that they are talking about a holiday known for stuffing birds and all. "Because don't get me wrong, we can bitch about Isaiah Bradley all day long, if you need to." 

"What do you need me to bring?" Steve asks, because the last time they'd "bitched" about Isaiah Bradley, Sam had detoured for ten minutes about what a great tongue the man's son has, and really, Steve is cranky enough without another reminder about how _single_ he is. "I figured between the three of you, you and the ladies would have everything taken care of." 

"I am _not_ going to be the man who tells Widow or Carter that you think they're here, cooking up a bunch of food for us," Sam snorts. "Not on your life." 

"That's good, since that's not what I said." 

"Implied. Heavily, heavily implied." 

A picture of Bucky flashes across the screen and it quickly flashes to a monument in Arlington that makes Steve's stomach clench - ridiculous, since Steve knows where Bucky is, and it's not at the bottom of a gorge. But Steve's stomach can't be bothered to care, so Steve turns off the damn television and all of its historical inaccuracy. 

_You're inaccurate about that, too_ , Steve thinks spitefully, as the picture of the the monument fades. 

"So we aren't going to be eating anything on Thanksgiving?" Steve asks. "Because I like you, but if I have to bring all the food, I'm just staying here." 

"See, this is why friends don't let friends watch the History Channel. Because friends turn into Grinches way ahead of schedule. You're not allowed to be a Grinch before Black Friday, Steve," Sam says. There's mocking there, yes, but it's gentle enough that Steve wants to lean into it. It's dangerous, to feel that way, because there's only been two other people who ever could have that effect. 

One of them's a grandmother. The other's ... a very complicated situation right now. 

"Am I bringing you stuffing for your bird, Wilson?" Steve retorts. 

"See, that could almost be innuendo," Sam answers back. "I'm going to pretend it's that instead of a cruel taunt about my buddy Redwing."

Steve might not be the virgin that his Avengers teammates think he is - he really, really isn't - but he still blushes at Sam's comment. Because Sam is handsome, and if things were different ... 

"I don't think your ladies are into sharing any more than they already do," he murmurs. 

"We'd probably need a bigger bed." Sam's voice, when he talks, is _all Harlem_ , and sitting there, alone in his apartment, Steve remembers that first blow job in a club in Harlem in 1939, on a detour home from art school...

Sitting there, alone in his apartment, Steve is acutely aware that there are not any blow jobs in his immediate future.

"So no stuffing. Pie?" 

"Carter and Widow haven't gotten around to ordering any dessert," Sam says agreeably. "Because, yes, that's what we are doing. Ordering food. You can judge all you want, Rogers, but you will stop judging when you have tried the apple-walnut-cranberry dressing that came from the Ricket's Bakery." 

"Not sure those flavors belong together," Steve says. 

"But your Depression self will try it out, anyway, because you can't resist trying new food," Sam says. "Consequence of growing up poor. I've got your number on that, Rogers." 

It's true enough, so Steve doesn't argue. "My Depression self is going to feel pretty weird buying all that sugar to make a pie, you know."

"It'll be good for you," Sam promises. "Go to the store, yell at the sugar prices, come home, and bake me a pie." 

"It'll be good for me, but you're the one benefiting?" 

"Yup. Start slow, though. Something simple, like pumpkin. Widow'd prefer the pecan, but with your sugar issues, I think we had better start with something that doesn't require an entire crop of sugar cane to be produced," Sam says.

It's those orders that send Steve to the grocery store.

He leaves a note for Bucky, on the fridge, just in case. 

_Gone shopping. Back soon._

~*~

That is how Steve finds himself standing in the middle of the baking goods aisle, looking at bags of sugar that are $3.00 a piece. 

Steve understands inflation. Really, he does. It's not difficult, and he does not have to be Howard Stark - or Tony Stark - to understand it. 

He gets it.

But the price of sugar is _ridiculous._

Steve stands there for a long time, occasionally getting pushed out of the way by impatient holiday shoppers - sometimes politely, but mostly impatiently. He's still standing there, when the impatient mothers, grandmothers, fathers, and husbands take a break from pushing him out of the way in order to allow a young couple to do the same. 

Two young men. The fact that they are a couple is both obvious and not particularly shocking to Steve anymore - everything about this century is loud and obvious, and ... and this is one of the few times that Steve's glad to see it. 

"Blueberry this year, right?" 

"If we show up at Aunt Jackie's bearing any fruit but apple, we're going to go home hungry."

"Hard to be hungry if we have a whole blueberry pie to split between us." 

Steve listens to them bicker, watches them slip their hands into each other's palms, and remembers walking past Mister Allen's store, back when winters were the cause of Bucky's frown for entirely different reasons than they are today. He remembers pulling up the top of his shirt, to cover a nose that he'd been certain was frost bitten, and coveting the sweet treats in the windows. 

_"All that fudge. We could just snitch a piece, Steve, and the rich old miser'd never notice."_

_"I'd notice, Bucky."_

He remembers standing there, next to Bucky, both of their hands so cold, and both of them unable to reach over and just take each other's hands and lend each other a little warmth.

"I am not spending the night baking two pies, sugarplum." 

"I am not missing out on Aunt Jackie's cornbread stuffing, sugar pie." 

"Your pun was so much worse than mine."

He remembers sitting next to Bucky, years later, in a tent that felt thinner than their shirts had ever been. He remembers poking field rations, being cold despite the serum, and enjoying the warmth of Bucky's breath on his cheek as he'd leaned over and made a promise that would go unfulfilled.

_"This shit is awful. Times like these, I regret all the times I let you talk me out of stealing Mister Allen's fudge, Rogers."_

_"When we get back, we'll buy up the entire window display, Buck."_

_"Promise?"_

The couple leaves, and Steve is alone with his memories.

That is how Steve ends up buying ten bags of sugar. 

~*~

It isn't Steve's first trip to the store that day. 

In fairness, Steve's never actually made fudge before. It takes an additional trip to the store, to get cream and extra butter, before he is able to have all of the ingredients. It takes an additional half an hour of research to figure out what he's doing wrong.

The first two batches _do not turn out well_. 

But batches three through eight do in fact turn out well, and he's standing there, surveying batches and wondering if maybe he should have made Sam's pie first, twelve hours later, when Bucky finally comes home.

Bucky's been on a mission for S.H.I.E.L.D., and anybody could tell that, just by the tired look on his face, the dirt on his cheeks, and a faint not-home smell that Steve can't quite place. Bucky didn't used to look tired, even when when they were starving and cold. 

Steve thinks unhappy thoughts about Karpov, and gestures to the rows of fudge, some still cooling. "Hungry?" 

Steve can see Bucky mentally counting the rows. "Did you seriously make six batches of fudge?" he asks, a little uncertainly. "Because I thought I was supposed to be the crazy one here." 

Torn between wanting to remind Bucky that he isn't _crazy_ and to remind him that it's 2013 and nobody is going to blame him for being traumatized by his experience the way they used to, Steve instead decides to correct Bucky's math. "I made eight, actually. First two didn't make it." 

Bucky looks over the rows again and gives a short, gasping, wheezing sound that sounds like a laugh. It's almost a laugh, and it would be, if Bucky hadn't almost completely forgotten how to laugh at all. But Steve feels like he _has_ forgotten and Steve suddenly feels a whole lot less terrible about having made eight batches of fudge. 

Because even a small laugh out of Bucky these days is worth twelve hours of labor.

"If this is what happens when they send me on a local mission, I hate to see what you're going to do when they send me _out of the country_ ," Bucky says. "You know, if they ever end up trusting me that much." 

Maybe it's the last bit that makes Steve start rambling. "I was just standing there in the store, and I was thinking about Mister Allen's fudge and how the war didn't end the way we wanted it to. I was angry about inflated sugar prices and fudge we never got to eat and there was this couple and I ..." Steve trails off and bites his lip, because Bucky startles a little bit when he says 'couple,' and well, he probably should. 

Sharing body heat because you were freezing to death does not equal being a couple, and that had been years ago, anyway. 

Steve makes himself shrug with the kind of purpose that would have looked effortless on Natasha, but he's pretty sure it looks hopeless on him. "Ghost of Thanksgivings Past," he says lightly.

Bucky reaches around him, picking up a piece of the chocolate fudge, before Steve can tell him that it really does need more time to cool. He bites into it, and Steve's never been so glad that he never moved into Stark Tower. All of those little invasive technological gadgets that Stark no doubt has have absolutely no right to capture the contented look on Bucky's face.

No, this moment belongs in their cramped little non-billionaire apartment in Brooklyn, right next door to Sam, Sharon, and Natasha. 

"This is amazing," Bucky says, after a swallow that makes Steve ache all the way down to his toes. "Your mama's recipe?" 

"Alton Brown's," Steve says reluctantly. "Mama never had the stuff to actually make fudge. Closest we got was a birthday cake, once." 

Bucky nods, and Steve appreciates that Bucky, Sam, and Natasha are the only people in Steve's life who don't give him pity looks when he mentions his childhood. Even Dr. Banner does it, and from what Steve's heard, Dr. Banner's life was a whole lot worse. 

"I think she would have approved," Bucky says, and there's a small quirk of his lips around another handful of fudge. "So, peanut butter, chocolate, and what the hell are those?" 

"This is marshmallow, and this one is marshmallow, peanut butter, _and_ chocolate," Steve admits. 

Bucky looks doubtful better than anybody that Steve has ever known. Okay, Sam and Sharon are currently giving him a good run for his money, but time and experience are in Bucky's favor. "See, I wasn't sure that the whole eight batches of fudge was a sign that you were feeling decadent, until you told me that you decided to dump your entire kitchen into a batch of fudge." 

This batch really _should_ have more time to cool, but nobody has goaded Steve quite the way Bucky has. That four year age difference between them has never given _Steve_ an unfair advantage in that arena at all. So he snatches a piece of the still warm fudge and thrusts it into his mouth.

It's warm and gooey and too sweet. It's over the top the way everything in this century is, but Steve can't be as resentful as he was when he first woke up - not with Bucky standing right there in front of him, watching him expectantly. 

Steve licks the sticky remainders of the fudge off his fingers and swallows. "It's decadently _delicious_ ," he argues. 

Bucky's never _unreadable_ to Steve, but Winter Soldier had been, and for a moment, that line is between them again. "Maybe I should taste it," Bucky says slowly. 

The second piece is even harder to tear away from the still warm batch, but Steve manages to pull away a chunk and starts to hand it to Bucky. He means it as an innocent gesture, until his hand is half-way to Bucky's mouth. 

He's never initiated things between them. At first, it didn't seem appropriate - Bucky's younger, after all. But then, they'd settled into a pattern, and that pattern had always been one that Steve had enjoyed.

But waking up seventy years into the future has thrown all of his favorite patterns into disarray, and part of dealing is learning how to appreciate new patterns. So halfway to Bucky's mouth, Steve decides on a purpose that Bucky's always been responsible for tossing in _Steve's_ lap.

Bucky's mouth meets him halfway, wrapping around his fingers so hesitantly that Steve might have second guessed himself. Maybe on any other day, any day in which he hadn't spent twelve hours baking nostalgia-fueled fudge, Steve might have.

But on this day, there's still a stickly sweet coating on the back of Steve's throat as he replaces his fingers with his mouth. 

It's only after that taste has been replaced by the salty, bitter taste of Bucky that Bucky's still-fudge-flavored fingers curl into the hair on the back of Steve's neck as Bucky whispers, "I missed this." 

"Me too." 

"Yeah, the fudge kind of gave you away, there." 

"Well, I did promise you the entire window display, once. I'm a few years late, but the war didn't exactly end the way we thought it would." 

Bucky's quiet so long that Steve starts to worry that he's said the wrong thing. 

"I for one didn't predict the chest hair you were suddenly going to develop," Bucky says finally.

That's an odd train of thought, but Bucky trying to actually make the conversation less serious has to be the healthiest thing he's done in a long time, so Steve lays there and soaks up the sight of the happiest he's seen Bucky in a long time. 

"Don't have to worry about lice as much anymore," Steve answers as Bucky yawns into his chest. "It's a little weird, having it there. Still getting used to it." 

"Describes lots of things in this century," Bucky answers. His fingers run through the hair on Steve's chest as he adds, "Sometimes I think I could get used to the weird, though."

~*~

At the end of the day, it's all Sam's fault, and that's one of the many, many reasons Steve is listing for “why I am grateful for Sam Wilson” come Thanksgiving Day.

"Which is nice and all," Sam says once they are sitting around the table with four of the remaining batches of fudge between them. "But I still never got my pie." 

Steve's pretty sure he's going to be hearing that for a good, long time. It's the kind of good-natured sarcasm that only good friends can appreciate from each other. Sitting around that table in the apartment with Sharon, Sam, Bucky, and Natasha, Steve is thankful for the second chance at forming the kind of friendships that could have been lost forever when his plane went down.

Later, when he and Bucky return to their apartment and Bucky doesn't hesitate before crawling into bed next to Steve, Steve silently gives his thanks for that as well.


End file.
